


Friends With the Monster

by kira_khaleesi



Category: Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Ambiguous/Open Ending, F/M, Ficlet, Mild Angst, Mutual Pining, canonverse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-03
Updated: 2020-08-03
Packaged: 2021-03-05 21:00:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,149
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25691701
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kira_khaleesi/pseuds/kira_khaleesi
Summary: Every night, Rey can’t find sleep, but lately a soft lullaby fills her mind until she finally drifts away.Later, she hears Leia around the base, humming the same tune.“What is that?” she asked.Surprised, Leia replied. “I’d sing this whenever Ben couldn’t fall asleep.”
Relationships: Rey/Ben Solo | Kylo Ren
Comments: 26
Kudos: 159
Collections: Comfort Gems 2020, Reylo Hidden Gems





	Friends With the Monster

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ekayla](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ekayla/gifts).



Luke had been right after all, when he had said that things would not go the way she thought. In defense of that crotchety and disillusioned old man, Rey’s plan to save Ben Solo was pretty half baked. 

Looking back, she’s not sure why she thought it would be so easy- that all she had to do was show up, and he would choose to leave. 

Choose her. 

At night, Rey lies awake scolding herself for her naivete, her stupidity. She laughs condescendingly at how quick she was to believe in a vision because it showed her what she wanted. Rationally, she is aware that her life on Jakku has left scars, and that the emotional ones that wasteland carved into her soul will last longer than any pain from injury. 

In her own desperation to find belonging, to find a family, she had run to Ben with nothing but the hint that he could turn. 

Now, she tosses and turns after the sun sets and the base quiets, Rey does her best not to cry at the fact that she offered herself to Ben and he made a different choice. 

Just like everyone else, he didn’t choose her.

* * *

  
  
  


After Crait, Rey has kept the bond closed. 

It isn’t easy- in fact, it is nearly impossible. Closing off a part of yourself, during every waking moment takes a lot of energy. 

At times, she can feel him on the other end. Like it’s a string that connects them across the stars, and Ben is tugging gently on his end to see if she’s still there. Rey never answers.

She is able to pass off her exhaustion as part of the war, that training and fighting and missions and battles are wearing her down like everyone else. Most believe it. 

Neither Leia nor Rose have said anything, but Rey can tell by the way they look at her that they know she is lying. Sometimes, Rey imagines what it would be like to tell somebody- to explain what happened on Ach-To and aboard the  _ Supremacy _ . How liberating it would be to have that weight off her chest, to let the secret out. 

But then she imagines the stares, the judgement, the hard questions that would follow her revelation of being connected in such an intimate way to the leader of their enemy. The suspicion of her loyalties, and perhaps even orders to use their bond to spy. 

So Rey says nothing. 

She says nothing about the sound of his voice whispering “please” plagues her dreams, and pretends she doesn’t compare every fleeting touch from her friends to the spark of his fingers against hers. She keeps it to herself, and the bags under her eyes only grow. 

  
  
  


* * *

It’s six months after the battle at Crait when Rey finally sleeps through the night. She wakes in the morning groggy- unused to the feeling of several consecutive hours asleep. Rubbing her eyes, she gets dressed and heads to the morning briefing.

In the back of her mind, she can hear a man humming softly.

Two weeks later, she has grown used to the song that lulls her into slumber; it is comfortable, warm, and wraps around her mind like the softest of blankets. Cocooned in the safety that the tune provides, Rey sleeps more soundly than she has in her entire life. 

She doesn’t know where the song came from, but suspects that perhaps her father once hummed it to her.

He is nothing but a blurry figure in her memory, but it is not completely implausible that he once sang her to sleep as an infant. Rey wonders if he knew, even then, singing her to sleep, that one day he would sell her into slavery. 

That when forced to make a decision, he wouldn’t put his own daughter first. 

Somehow, even knowing what her father was, the choice he made, the song still comforts her.

  
  
  


* * *

After Poe debriefs everyone on his latest recon mission with Pava, Rey stays behind to help Leia clean up some of the materials in the conference room. In preparation for their strike on one of the First Orders manufacturing plants, the base has slowly fallen into disorder. Datapads and supplies strewn over the desks in such a haphazard fashion that they had had to put Threepio in sleep-mode before he blew a circuit over the mess. 

Rey crouches to pull a datastick that had fallen out from under a table, when she hears the song. She stands so quickly that she hits her head on the table.

“Rey?” Leia steps forward, head cocked to the side. “Are you alright?”

Rey rubs her head, grimacing. “I’ll be fine.”

“You stood up pretty quick there- did something startle you?”

“Um...well, I-” Rey swallows, “were you, were you humming, just now?”

Leia chuckles. “Oh, yes. You’ve got to forgive an old woman her strange habits. We’ve made amazing headway and, believe me, I  _ do _ have faith in the Resistance, but-” she sighs, her shoulders sagging, “we have also lost so much. Sometimes I like to be reminded of my home.”

Rey frowns. “So that song, it’s from Alderaan?”

“Yes,” Leia nods, “an Alderaanian lullaby. I used to sing it to Ben when he was a child- he was always haunted by such terrible dreams, and it was the only thing that could get him to sleep.”

Inhaling shakily, Rey’s eyes widen. Something, a feeling, foreign but not unwelcome, blooms in her chest. 

Mumbling a hasty goodbye, Rey runs out of the room to the other end of the base, slamming the door to her quarters. Willing her heart to stop racing, Rey sits on the edge of her cot and closes her eyes. 

Breathing deeply, in and out, Rey reaches out for that string. The cord that binds her to the man her friends call a monster, the man she has tried so hard to lock out. 

Her other half. 

When she finds the string, she imagines wrapping her hands around it as tightly as she can, and then  _ yanks _ with the intention of pulling him to her.

Rey opens her eyes only to have them fill with tears at the sight of him in her room. 

Brows knit together in concern, he steps forward cautiously. “Rey, I- are you-”

“- _ Ben _ .” She breathes softly, before surging forward to collide with his chest, wrapping her arms around him. Sobbing into his tunic, Rey pours everything - her regret, her loneliness, the way the  _ ache _ of his absence cuts her to the bone - into the bond, whispering “I’m sorry, I’m so sorry,” over and over. 

It takes him a beat before Ben brings his arms around her, but when he does it feels like home. 

With his lips pressed softly into her hair, he murmurs “I missed you.”

It is then that Rey decides she will never let him go.


End file.
